Small Business Owner: 5 Resolutions for a Better Business

A successful business is always looking for ways to improve. So when the New Year rolls around, it’s time for a small business owner to start thinking resolutions.

If you’re a small business owner searching for ways to improve your business plan, or if you’re just starting a business in the new year, consider these 5 resolutions to rev up sales and success.

1. Revamp Your Marketing Strategies

How are you selling your product or service? What types of ROIs (returns on investments) are you seeing from your current marketing and advertising strategies?

Revisit the forms of advertising you’re currently investing in. For many current small businesses, this means looking at blog posts, email blasts, social media presence, flyer distribution, cold calls, and discounts to name a few. If you haven’t been seeing quality returns on these strategies, it’s time for something to change.

2. Make Sure Your Product or Service is Meeting a Need

When starting a business, you’ll surely create a product or service that meets a need among customers. Perhaps you’re producing software that fills a niche for a certain type of industry or making a product that helps your target audience complete a task.

That’s all well and good. But as time goes on, a successful entrepreneur will check in frequently to make sure that that initial need is still there. Time moves quickly, and needs change. To keep your business afloat, you’ll need to change and adjust just as fast (or faster).

3. Gain a Better Understanding of Where You Spend Your Time

As a small business owner, you’re forced to wear many hats. You’re not only in charge of day-to-day affairs in your storefront or central office, but you’re also ultimately in charge of administrative affairs, your web presence, accounting, and more.

All of these responsibilities can not only leave you frazzled, but they can also mean these jobs aren’t getting done efficiently. Moreover, you have less and less time to devote to what you do best: make, market, and sell your product or service.

4. Start Delegating

Once you have a better understanding of where you’re spending most of your time, you need to begin paring things down and delegating the smaller, less important jobs. Again, you’re most needed as the face of your business and as the true entrepreneur that you are. Carrying out administrative paperwork, updating your privacy policy, time card organization, and online Facebook posting should not put all on you, the owner.

For many small business owners, this means outsourcing and delegating smaller responsibilities to other companies and businesses who specialize in things like administrative organization and web presence management. For tasks that repeat regularly, this can easily be done in a more efficient and convenient way.

5. Scale Up

Finally, think big when it comes to the growth of your business. You have to spend money to make money, and there’s no time like the present.

If you’ve been in business for at least a year and your books are heading in a positive direction, consider ways in which you can invest and scale up your business so that day-to-day operations run more smoothly, clients and customers are happier, and your revenue is ever-increasing.

For some businesses, this may mean adding a secondary location. Other businesses may be ready to hire more staff or increase staff hours. Whatever it is, start thinking about it now.